It’s been 31 years since a Watson Chapel High School senior disappeared. Though time has passed, her family continues searching for answers as to what happened.
PINE BLUFF, Ark. — This Friday, May 9, 2025, marked 31 years since the disappearance of Cleashindra Hall, a senior at Watson Chapel High School.
Hall had plans to be a pediatrician, and after a summer internship in Boston, she was going to attend Tennessee State University on a pre-med track.
“She was always babysitting somebody’s child, because her goal was to be a pediatrician, and so she always surrounded herself with somebody’s children,” Cleashindra’s mom, Laurell Hall, remembered. “She worked with the nursery at church.”
Cleashindra had an after-school job where she worked at the home office of Dr. Larry Amos, less than a half-mile from where her family lived.
Shortly before she was set to leave for her internship, she went to Amos’ office for another shift.
It was May 9, 1994, and it was also the last time Laurell saw her daughter.
“When I went into the room and I didn’t see her in her bed, then I went to the phone to call her boss,” Hall said. “He said, ‘I don’t know. I think she left at 8:30. So he’s like, ‘Well, hold on, let me check her timesheet.’ Then he came back a few minutes later and said, ‘Yeah, she signed out at 8:30.”
Dr. Amos said that Cleashindra had left with someone in a car.
Laurell said she didn’t think that was something her daughter would do, and wanted to file a missing person’s report right away, but police told her she had to wait 24 hours.
However, she still wasn’t allowed to file one even after Laurell’s son, a sophomore, didn’t see his sister at band practice that day.
“What we know about what happened to her- we don’t know anything,” Hall said. “Just like it was on that day. The police really didn’t take it seriously when she disappeared.”
In the years since, there have been some moments where it looked like the Halls might get closure.
One of those was in 2012, when police searched Amos’ home after having received a tip. Unfortunately, that search and all others ultimately lead nowhere.
“It’s like not waking up from a bad dream,” Hall said, “And it’s just happening over and over.”
The family plans to hold a balloon release as just another effort to keep Cleashindra’s memory alive.
Meanwhile, they’re still holding out hope that this might be the last anniversary where they have to go without knowing what happened.
“I’m hoping that this is the last time that we have to do this,” Hall said. “I just cannot believe in a town like Pine Bluff, where everybody knows everybody… that nobody has any information.”
We reached out to the Pine Bluff Police Department (PBPD) to see if they had any new information on the case, and a detective explained that they continue to test old evidence with the hope that modern technology will give them some sort of breakthrough.
He added that anyone who knows anything about what may have happened to Cleashindra should reach out to the PBPD at (870)-730-2090 or submit an anonymous tip by clicking here.
The post Pine Bluff mom searches for answers 31 years after daughter’s disappearance appeared first on World Online.
